ICA Housing Board Meeting – London, England

Before the meeting David Drew, Labour and Co-operative Party MP for Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK and Andy Love, Labour and Co-operative Party MP for Edmonton, London, UK spoke to the Board about the impact of the USA foreclosure crisis, the state of cooperative housing in the UK and the work of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Housing Co-ops.

The President’s report introduced the new website explaining that it will evolve over time and contain housing co-operative related materials, profiles of housing co-operative environments in different countries, and explained that if this was to be used as the ‘default resource’ by co-ops around the world then all ICA Housing members would have to be actively involved in producing and suggesting content.  The use of new media to reinforce engagement between meetings was also proposed.

Scandinavian ICA Housing members have voiced their willingness to support a person who will work for the visibility of European co-operative housing in Brussels, being a bridge between Cecodhas and Co-operatives Europe and bringing back knowledge and useful networks to the organizations.  Mr. Norberg presented the SWOT analysis previously discussed by a group of ICA Housing members. The work of the ICA Housing staff was used by the group in their SWOT analysis.

The Board stressed the importance of using ICA Housing to publicize the cooperative housing business model as a sustainable, socially, economically and environmentally responsible way of providing housing with worldwide applicability and the importance of sharing best practice and strengthening the link between Board gatherings

A Board Manual was distributed to Board Members which contained the most detailed and up to date account of ICA Housing

Site visit to two London Co-ops

The ICA Housing Board were provided with a site visit to two housing cooperatives in London, CDS Coops, the host of the meeting in London, arranged for two site visits to CDS Housing Co-operatives. The first was Sanford Housing Cooperative in New Cross and the second St George’s Church Housing Co-operative Limited in Camberwell.